No Dress, No Vows, and Less Status in Grief

By SHAILA K. DEWAN

Published: January 22, 2002

Oct. 26. Jan. 30. Sept. 28, 2002. Those are some of the days that would have flowered into weddings had it not been for Sept. 11. Instead, the terrorist attack left white gowns hanging in closets, awaiting a first fitting. It left homes where, each month, a copy of Bride's magazine arrives to find no bride.

And it left fiancés and fiancées facing a drastically revised future, with little of the legal protection for claiming benefits, estate money or any federal awards that widows or widowers have.

Those who were betrothed are also left to navigate their loss in fragile solidarity with families that may have been prepared to welcome them, but that they had not yet joined. That tandem grief has been strained, for some by simple awkwardness, for others by battles over what was left behind.

For Rachel Uchitel and the family of her fiancé, who worked at Sandler O'Neill & Partners, the tension has fallen somewhere in between. ''They lost their child,'' Ms. Uchitel said. But, she argued, ''My everyday life has changed. I don't come home to the same person. I don't even come home to the same home.'' She insisted it would be no easier for a fiancé or fiancée to move on than it would for any family member.

There is no count of how many engagements were broken by Sept. 11, but at Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost more than 600 employees, 44 fiancés and fiancées have registered with the company's relief fund. One of them is Susann Brady, a registered nurse who lives in Montclair, N.J. She was set to wed Gavin Cushny last Oct. 26, in a 12th-century church in Scotland where his late father had served as a minister.

It would have been a first marriage for both Ms. Brady, 43, and Mr. Cushny, 47, and they had planned to start a family immediately, she said. But now, she added, ''it may be too late for me.''

She has returned her wedding dress and thrown out anything with the word bride on it. She has also cleaned out her fiancé's apartment, fielded calls from charities that want to give money to his next of kin, and notified his friends and family of his death. His mother, who lives in Scotland, appointed Ms. Brady to administer her son's estate. ''All the things a wife would do,'' Ms. Brady said.

But the fact that she was shy, by just a month, of being his wife has become a painful obstacle to Ms. Brady as she tries to reconstruct a life. ''Here you lost the most important person in your life, and nobody gives you any recognition,'' she said. ''You just kind of get bypassed.''

Because the two had separate apartments, Ms. Brady has found it difficult to qualify for help that charities might offer a spouse or a domestic partner. And when she called the grief counseling service offered by his insurance company, she was told she was ineligible.

The anguish -- and the anger -- of those who were engaged has grown as the issue of money has come to the fore. Like spouses, many fiancés can expect a substantially diminished financial future.

Typically, those who died had incomes many times greater than that of the partner left behind. Some couples already lived together, their finances as entwined as they would have been after marriage. All experienced pain and suffering. And several of them say that if anyone should be compensated for lost wages, it should be they, not the parents and siblings who stand a much better chance of receiving the large awards expected to be doled out by the multibillion-dollar federal fund.

But bringing up the subject is not easy. Ms. Brady has not yet broached the issue with Mr. Cushny's mother, who declined to speak to a reporter.

In some cases, the dynamics of a modern-day family can complicate things further.

Lucy Aita of East Brunswick, N.J., had been engaged to Paul Innella, a broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, for 10 months when he died. Mr. Innella also had a child from a previous relationship. Ms. Aita, who has hired a lawyer to represent her interests, says Mr. Innella would have wanted her to have control over his estate, and that she would make sure that his child and the rest of his family share in it.

Mr. Innella's family says at this point that they can barely deal with the grief of their loss, much less make financial decisions. But James Rich, who is married to Mr. Innella's sister, said the family believed they might be legally obligated to give the money to Mr. Innella's child.

Sept. 11 caught engaged couples in various states of legal tidiness. One fiancée said that her husband-to-be had an appointment to sign a new will on Sept. 12. In the trade center collapse, Cantor Fitzgerald lost documents that recorded the beneficiaries of life insurance policies. Ms. Brady said she had been made the beneficiary of her husband's retirement plan, but because she was not yet his wife, the money will be taxed.

From a charity's standpoint, one problem is determining which claims of impending marriage are bona fide. Edie Lutnick, the executive director of the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund, says that claims by the betrothed, who are eligible for money, are carefully investigated.

''Have we had to tell someone they were not covered?'' Ms. Lutnick said. ''Yes.''

The truth, she said, is sometimes had to discern. ''For the most part, the parents are willing to say, 'My son loved this person,' 'This was my daughter's life,' '' she said. ''For the most part. But not always.''

Such uncertainties have compounded a sense that an engagement is considered something less than a legitimate relationship. ''I feel like I'm always trying to plead my case,'' said Kelly Gangwer, 30, who had been with her fiancé, Christopher Stewart Gray, a foreign exchange broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, since college. The two lived together, and the only thing that would have changed after their marriage, she said, was her last name.

''I know in my heart that I couldn't have loved Chris any more if I had that piece of paper,'' said Ms. Gangwer, who is waiting to find out if Cantor will extend health benefits to fiancés, as they have for families.

The Red Cross and many attack-related charities have helped with bills and mortgages, particularly when the intended could document a financial or long-term relationship. But the big money, the awards from the multibillion-dollar federal fund, will go into the deceased person's estate, where it will be distributed according to state law. In New York, fiancés typically cannot lay claim to such estates, although a recent New Jersey case suggests that they may be able to do so there, said Jerry Sattin, a New Jersey lawyer doing pro bono work for some of those whose loved ones died on Sept. 11.

Perhaps because of the relative youth of so many of the victims, not every story involves ex-spouses, dependent children or bad blood. Allen Kolodzik, 25, had purchased a house in Chicago with his fiancée, Andrea Haberman, who died in the World Trade Center on her first business trip. The Habermans, he said, have encouraged him to call the Red Cross for help with the mortgage and are sharing decisions such as whether to file a claim with the federal fund. ''It's just like I've got another set of parents,'' he said.

When things do not go as smoothly, it can be just as awkward for the family as for the intended. Sally O'Grady, whose son, James Andrew O'Grady, was engaged to Ms. Uchitel when he died, acknowledged that ''the bottom line is, he loved her more than anyone at the end there.'' But to her family, she said, knowing someone for two years is not the same as knowing them for 32.

And, in part because her son, a managing director of Sandler O'Neill, had been so successful in recent years, with the ability to travel and have a second home, Mrs. O'Grady said, she had not had the opportunity to get to know Ms. Uchitel, a 26-year-old television producer , as well as she knew some of his previous girlfriends.

Mr. O'Grady had willed everything to his sister, who is pregnant for the first time. And although Ms. Uchitel had been a supportive presence, Mrs. O'Grady said, there had inevitably been clashes over what belonged to whom.

''He left the money to my daughter, she needs it, and she's my first priority,'' Mrs. O'Grady said. ''If Rachel was in real need, and he supported her, things would be different. She's very young, I think she's going to marry someone with a lot of money. She's just starting her career, and she's going to be fine.''

Ms. Uchitel said she had gotten some charity money and was far from poor. Still, she felt there should be something to ease the pain of a lost future. ''Money doesn't necessarily compensate,'' she said, ''but in this society that's what we use to compensate. What else is there, unless they're going to give me some knight in shining armor?

''And in my eyes, that's never going to happen. I lost the person I loved and the person who loved me.''

Photo: Rachel Uchitel's fiancé, James Andrew O'Grady, a managing director of Sandler O'Neill and Partners, died in the Sept. 11 terror attack. (Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)(pg. B2)